Conflicting reports surround fate of baby of UK IS bride

FILE - This is a Monday Feb. 23, 2015 file handout image of a three image combo of stills taken from CCTV issued by the Metropolitan Police Kadiza Sultana, left, Shamima Begum, centre and and Amira Abase going through security at Gatwick airport, before they caught their flight to Turkey. The Dutch man who married a British teenager after she ran away to join the Islamic State group says he wants to return home to the Netherlands with Shamima Begum and their newborn son. Yago Riedijk tells the BBC in an interview aired Sunday, March 3, 2019 from a Kurdish-run detention center that he met Begum within days of her arrival in Syria when she was 15. (Metropolitan Police via AP, file)

FILE - This undated photo released by the Metropolitan Police of London, shows Shamima Begum, a young British woman who went to Syria to join the Islamic State group and now wants to return to Britain. During an interview, Tuesday, March 5, 2019, in Sunamganu, Bangladesh, Begum's father, Ahmed Ali, said his daughter’s citizenship should not be canceled and that she could be punished in the United Kingdom if it was determined she had committed a crime. (Metropolitan Police of London via AP, File)

LONDON — There were conflicting reports Friday about the newborn son of a U.K.-born teenager who left her London home to join the Islamic State group in Syria, after the mother's lawyer said the boy was reported to have died.

Lawyer Tasnime Akunjee tweeted that he has "strong but as yet unconfirmed reports that Shamima Begum's son has died. He was a British citizen."

He declined to provide further details.

However, Mustafa Bali, spokesman for the military group in northern Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces, tweeted that the reports were "fake" and the baby "is alive and healthy."

But Bali later deleted the tweet without explanation, and British media then reported that the baby was dead, citing unnamed SDF officials and a medical certificate.

The British government could not confirm the reports.

Begum was 15 when she and two friends left London to marry IS fighters in Syria in 2015, at a time when the group's online recruitment program lured many impressionable young people to its self-proclaimed caliphate.

Begum recently resurfaced in a refugee camp, and gave birth last month.

Begum, now 19, told journalists that she wanted to raise her son in Britain, but the government revoked her citizenship. Begum told reporters that she had lost two other children to malnutrition and disease.

Her Dutch jihadi husband Yago Riedijk, who is in a Kurdish-run detention center, said last week that he wanted to return to the Netherlands with Begum and their son.

British Home Secretary Sajid Javid said last month he had revoked Begum's citizenship — even while saying he wouldn't make a decision that would render a person stateless. Javid also confirmed that Begum's son was a British citizen, though he said it would be "incredibly difficult" to facilitate the return of a child from Syria.

Begum's parents are from Bangladesh but her family says she isn't a dual citizen. The family has said it plans to challenge Javid's decision.